Does The Power of the Dog’s 12 Oscar Nominations Indicate Best Picture Advantage Over CODA’s 3?

Imagine a world where we determine our Oscar predictions by which film has the most nominations. Perhaps not the defining factor, but one which sways us somewhat. Not many – or any – of the Academy Awards stats we store from the history books are a sure-fire bet for guess success. Was it big during the fall festival season? Has the film won the most televised awards? Is the momentum seemingly unstoppable? Did it get the DGA nod? Win SAG Ensemble? PGA?

We all know the current, final hurdle Oscar narrative this year. A kind of two-horse race between the season juggernaut The Power of the Dog, topping the nominations list with 12, and the crowd-pleaser CODA, the earliest release with the most late-riser status – just the 3 nods. I say just, but we now surely have to accept that a mini-clean sweep could be on the cards for the Sian Heder gem.

Meanwhile, there’s a real possibility that Jane Campion’s inevitable Best Director win could be The Power of the Dog‘s only gold statuette. Or else we’ve had the hype wool pulled over our eyes, and Campion’s film walks away with multiple awards, including Best Picture, and CODA is yesterday’s news.

Back in 1999, still relatively fresh-faced to the awards predicting game but lifelong movie fan all the same, I told a friend of mine that Shakespeare in Love would receive the highest number of Oscar nominations. Thus adding another bullet to its prominent belt. Looking back it seems pretty obvious to suggest that a film with fine writing, plenty of acting talent, as well as flourishing right across the board technically, would top the nominations tally. But I was speaking in terms of its prowess to surpass what most were considering the favourite, Saving Private Ryan. With little consideration for the decent box office showing and a certain Miramax in its corner.

You see, and many of similar generations of Oscar followers will abide to, the supposed favourite to take home the Best Picture Academy Award oh-so often was the one with the most nominations. It was not quite the done deal, say, Picture and Best Director aligning up was, but those who knew the Oscar race were organically drawn to the parallel. And its easy to assume the path of history will follow this trend years and years back. The actual stats certainly demonstrate this, but only for small periods of AMPAS history.

In fact, that Shakespeare in Love year is when the trend hit a brick wall. It was mildly strange to me to see the film with the highest nominations the next year, American Beauty, only manage 8. Of course its an incredible achievement, but it still felt somewhat meek at that time. Look at a handful of Best Picture winners that followed (none of which were stand alone nominations toppers):

Dreamgirls, by the way, is the only film in the history of the Academy Awards to receive the highest number of Oscar nominations and fail to make the Best Picture shortlist. The 79th edition of the ceremony was a real oddball if you favoured the films based on their tallies. The Little Miss Sunshine comparisons are obvious here, and already widespread. That film received 4 nominations, and came away with 2 Oscars (Supporting Actor and Screenplay) following its PGA victory.

The Golden Globe film winner was Babel with a decent 7 Oscar nods – the Best Picture nominee with the highest. It did not win, of course. The Queen (6 nominations) was the BAFTA winner – but not at the Oscars. Pan’s Labyrinth (also with 6) wasn’t even a Best Picture nominee, failed to win Best Foreign Language Film, and yet still bagged 3 awards. All the way down on 5 nominations, The Departed would be the Best Picture winner. What in the end proved to be a certainty, that tally of nods then seemed both under-achieving and yet neither here nor there.

Elsewhere in the new century, victors such as Gladiator (12) and Chicago (13) felt like the Academy were hurtling back nostalgically to sandal epics and vibrant musicals. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (11) was something of a manufactured clean sweep for the trilogy. And by the time Slumdog Millionaire (10 – not the highest that year by the way) won, the Oscars tide was swooshing into a branch-spreading new era. Not just a game-changing alteration of the Best Picture allocations for 2009, but gradually an evolution of Academy members. Whether that in itself makes the nominations total for Best Picture hopefuls less a key factor is another story.

In perspective, and before we career off the road completely, the 1980s and 1990s strongly echo the aforementioned Best Picture winners with the highest number of nominations. If you bookend those two decades with Ordinary People (6 Oscar nods) and American Beauty, only two films failed to win Best Picture while sitting alone at the top of the nomination tree. Reds (12), but was beaten to the finish line by Chariots of Fire (7). And then Bugsy (10) lost out to the worthy anomaly that is The Silence of the Lambs (7). Unlucky Warren Beatty, though the Best Director prize went his way for the former. Incidentally, a further four films actually tied nominations with the eventual Best Picture winners:

What changed? I’m not here to dissect what exactly changed into the new century, but that eerie millennium transition and the surge of the internet play a part for sure. The correlation between nominations tally and the Best Picture winner have rarely matched since, thus we just don’t talk about that any more. Even in the days of over five nominees for Best Picture, only four of the twelve years have seen the highest nominated film win the big prize. Did we ever think the likes of Lincoln (12), American Hustle (10), The Grand Budapest Hotel (9), The Favourite (10), Joker (11) or Mank (10) were heading for Best Picture wins? We did not. At least, not for very long at all.

The Oscar tide has ebbed a lot over time. But The Power of the Dog has had far more consistent gusto as a potential Best Picture winner this season than many of the double-figure nominated films over the years. But with so many of this year’s categories seeing The Power of the Dog playing second fiddle to stronger entries, we have to scan the nominations and ask: what can it actually win?

Perhaps Best Cinematography, which would make Ari Wegner the first female winner in this category ever. But Greig Fraser’s name might be carving its way onto the trophy as we speak for Dune. Similarly, Best Original Score is heading Dune‘s way for Hans Zimmer. Sorry, Jonny Greenwood, you were once a double contender. Best Sound? Come on, it’s also Dune. The Power of the Dog might not even be top three there. Same to be said for Best Production Design – looks like Dune also. There’s light at the end of the tunnel with the scattered Best Film Editing contention. Again, Dune looks strong, in what might well be a five-horse-race. Not much confidence inspired for the inevitable bridesmaid picture.

However, there’s a beaming lady on the other side of that coin for The Power of the Dog. Best Director is as done a deal as can be with Jane Campion. Apart from the Best Supporting Actress race where Ariana DeBose quashes the Kirsten Dunst bubble. And it’s surely too far gone to see Benedict Cumberbatch take Best Actor over Will Smith. Which leaves three more categories. And likewise, Kodi Smit-McPhee is not winning Best Supporting Actor over Troy Kotsur for CODA. Sian Heder is now in the driving seat to take Best Adapted Screenplay over Jane Campion – again for CODA. Oh, and Best Picture – where CODA swished over The Power of the Dog into front-runner status right at the death.

A huge drop kick back into the history books, and we might locate The Song of Bernadette and A Streetcar Named Desire alongside Jane Champion’s film – though both those won 4. If The Power of the Dog wins 4 Oscars then one of them is undoubtedly Best Picture. So perhaps we’ll see it alongside the likes of Reds and The Revenant, which walked away with 3 from 12: Best Director, an acting award and Cinematography. Imagine that. The way precursors are aligned right now The Power of the Dog might have to make do keeping Johnny Belinda and Becket company on the 12 nominations and 1 win section of the Academy Awards records. But this is all trivial. Or trivia.

Remember the little, homely films that could? Rocky. Kramer vs. Kramer. Ordinary People. Chariots of Fire. Terms of Endearment. Driving Miss Daisy. Does Moonlight fall into that? I’m digressing. And if CODA does win all 3 of its nominations? Not to compare the film to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but only two other films have won Best Picture on the way to what we’d call a clean sweep. The other was the very first Academy Awards when Wings won 2 for 2. I’m just saying…